Two North Georgia Laity Consecrated as Deaconess and Home Missioner

5/16/2016

Rene Grant of the Gainesville District (fourth from right) and John Jessup-Peterson of the Atlanta-Decatur Oxford District (second from right) were consecrated as Deaconess and Home Missioner. UMNS Photo.

Two North Georgia United Methodist laity, John Jessup-Peterson and Rene Grant, were among the Deaconesses and Home Missioners commissioned at General Conference during morning worship on Monday, May 16.

In the morning's sermon, from Matthew 22:1-14 and the parable of the king’s wedding banquet, Louisiana Episcopal Area leader Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey told delegates God invites people to come as they are, but not to stay as they are.

It was a fitting sermon to precede the consecration of deaconesses and home missioners, who "serving for not gratitude nor reward, but their reward is that they may serve."

After a shared liturgy, each deaconess and home missioner was given a stole and hands were laid upon them to demonstrate the support and prayers they have for their work by our connection.

Jessup-Peterson (pictured at right) will continue in his position as a computer technician at the Candler School of Theology and will use his role as Home Missioner to further live out his calling to information technology justice. He is a member of St. Paul UMC in Atlanta.

Grant is lay leader and in music ministry at Ebenezer UMC in the Gainesville District. She is active in Backpacks for Kids in Habersham Country.

Deaconesses and Home Missioners are laywomen and laymen who are called by God to be in a lifetime relationship in The United Methodist Church for engagement with a full-time vocation in ministries of love, justice, and service. Together they form a covenant community that is rooted in Scripture, informed by history, driven by mission, ecumenical in scope, and global in outreach. Read more about this ministry here.